On finding Mr Hanburys forgotten shopping bag ...... tales from a Chorlton supermarket

Now a little bit of our collective past bounced across my screen in the form of an old shopping bag from Hanburys.

A treasure from Hanburys, date unknown

It was sent over by Catherine Brownhill who found it in the attic, adding, “Look what turned up amongst a pile of old photos whilst having a COVID-19 loft clear out”.

For those who don’t know, Hanburys was the supermarket which occupied what until recently was the Co-op store on Barlow Moor Road.

Now, I liked Hannburys.

It was a no-nonsense place, which dispensed with elegance, and panache for branded goods sold a little cheaper than elsewhere.

At Christmas its loyalty card was just that ……. a tiny piece of card which was stamped every time you shopped there during the months of December.

And like Kingy across the road it was viewed with affection by those who shopped there, and on a busy day there might be a few who remembered when the building had been our first purpose-built cinema.

The cinema, 1928

It opened in the May of  1914, as the  Palais de Luxe, changing its name to the Palace around 1946, and closed in 1957.

After which the building was owned by Radio Rentals, and then sometime before 1969 it was taken over by Tesco and traded as such, until 1974.

This I know because of a reference in the planning records which record “Continuance of use of radio and television service centre as supermarket”.*

Now given that it was already trading as a Tesco store, I think this might have been the moment when it was sold on to Hanburys, which was a chain of stores across the north which had its origins, when Jeremiah Hanbury opened a small store in 1889 in Market Street, Farnworth, selling butter and bacon.

Forty years later the business was bought by Bolton wholesale grocers E.H. Steele Ltd, and in 1997 the 31 Hanbury’s stores in the north west were acquired by United Norwest Co-op.**

There will be those who are sniffy at featuring a shopping bag from a lost supermarket, but it is history, and what is more it may have been one of those bags which Hanburys started giving away in that short period when we were profligate with plastic bags.

And here I need some help, because I am trying to remember whether Hanburys followed the practice of Safeway and offered you big brown paper bags, which were sturdy but came without handles.

The empty building, 2019

And now the site is just an empty bit of cleared land.

Location; Chorlton

Pictures; Hanburys shopping bag, courtesy of Catherine Brownhill, the closed Co-op store, 2019, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and the Palais De Luxe cinema, circa 1928, Charles Ireland, GD10-07-04-6-13-01 courtesy of East Dunbartonshire Archives 

*Manchester City Council Planning Portal, https://pa.manchester.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?keyVal=ZZZZZZBCXT638&activeTab=summary

**List of supermarket chains in the UK, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_supermarket_chains_in_the_United_Kingdom

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester ........ nu 91 .........Higher Temple Street

You won’t find Higher Temple Street.

It went in the clearance of 19th century houses which also did for the surrounding network of streets in this bit of  Chorlton on Medlock.

But I have found it on the old maps, and so know it ran south from Rusholme Road down to Brunswick Street.

Back at the beginning of the last century there were 86 properties on Higher Temple Street, ranging from shops to houses, the odd industrial site and the HQ of the local Conservative Association.

By 1959, when the picture was taken some of those buildings had gone, and judging by the boarded-up shop, these properties would also soon be gone.

That said, despite the grand plan, the newsagents clings on, still no doubt dispensing, newspapers, cigarettes and ice cream to any one left to buy them.






Location; Chorlton-on-Medlock

Picture; Higher Temple Street, 1959, "Courtesy of Manchester Archives+ Town Hall Photographers' Collection", https://www.flickr.com/photos/manchesterarchiveplus/albums/72157684413651581?fbclid=IwAR0t6qAJ0-XOmfUDDqk9DJlgkcNbMlxN38CZUlHeYY4Uc45EsSMmy9C1YCk 

On the 161 heading for Well Hall and home

Some of the best photographs are the ones that leave you thinking.

Here as this 161 enters Well Hall Road on its way to Chislehurst, I am drawn by the two passengers that Jean has caught in the picture.

Now that journey from Woolwich on the 161 or 122 was a trip I must have made countless times.

For me by the time we had passed the old police station I was just minutes away from the stop just past 294 which was our house.

And like as not  I was like the woman on the lower deck, dog tired from a long shift at Glenville’s Food Factory by the Thames at Greenwich and pretty much ready for bed.

On the other hand sitting at the front on the top deck you were just alive to

all there was to see.

It started with that climb up from Woolwich with the common on the right and the military buildings to the left and once over Shooters Hill as the bus fell down towards the roundabout there were the woods, the Welcome Inn and of course in the distance the Odeon.

So little chance of dozing off with all of that to look at which pretty much is why I reckon that lady is wide awake.

Well it’s a thought anyway.

My memories of that 161 stretch on to a girl friend who lived in Chislehurst but that is another story and one for a long dark night when I reminisce with my kids about growing up in Well Hall.

Location; Well Hall, Eltham, London

Picture; from the collection of Jean Low

Turning up bits of Chorlton’s history in the most unexpected places .... the T shirt

Now here is a bit of history, and like lots of good history it is something that takes us directly to one person’s story.

It belongs to Francesca who wrote “I helped Bob, my uncle in Buonissiomo during the holidays and it was always busy. 

Still have the black T shirts with the logo on the sleeve we were given as uniform.”

Francesca had left the comment as part of a series of posts following a story I did on Buonissiomo which was the Italian deli on Beech Road.

So there you have it a little bit of Chorlton’s history along with a big bit of Francesca’s.

Location; Chorlton

Picture; Buonissiomo T shirt, courtesy of Francesca

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 46 ...... the one with the canal

I am on Camp Street just off Deansgate

Camps Street, 1938

And if I wanted to be more accurate we are standing in the Manchester and Salford Junction Canal Tunnel in 1938.

It is one of series of pictures which were taken by the City Engineers just under a hundred years after the canal opened to traffic in the October of 1839.

Forty years earlier the first proposals for a canal link from the river Irwell to the Rochdale Canal were floated in an effort to overcome the difficulties of off loading goods at the river and transporting them along the congested city streets.

The route of the canal across the city involved constructing a tunnel from Charles Street to Watson Street from which the waterway then ran in the open east as far as Lower Mosley Street before twisting south and running parallel with Chepstow Street before joining the Rochdale Canal just beyond Great Bridgewater Street.

Camp Street, 1947 showing what might be a shaft down to the canal

Much of the street pattern and many of the industrial buildings from that period have long since gone and I guess most people are not even aware that there was this cross city canal.

I first came across it when researching Camp Street a few years back and then discovered more of its story in Underground Manchester.*

This is a fascinating book and feeds that interest many of us have in mysterious and long forgotten tunnels.  Manchester has plenty of them and the book allows you to explore them through a collection of photographs, memories and documents.

It is a book I have long pondered on buying, but which in the end was passed onto me by David who often contributes to the blog.  He was born here in Chorlton and has vivid memories of the place in the 1950s and 60s.

Now this fascination with our lost tunnels is an interesting one and stems I suppose from a mix of genuine historical curiosity and that preoccupation with the slightly mysterious.

After all most of them were built so long ago that in some cases there are no official plans of where they are and certainly no real idea of their original purpose.

Added to this they pop up as tantalizing half clues which might be a bricked up entrance in a city cellar, or a faded newspaper clipping of a chance discovery by workman at the beginning of the last century.

Camps Street 2012

In the case of our waterway it was a letter in the Manchester City News of 1882 which described seeing both the “the canal tunnel with a towing path [which] came out near the Black Horse Hotel, Alport, where now stands Central Station.”**

Now sometimes they border on the conspiratorial and many of us will be have been told the story from the friend of a friend who came across an underground communication centre built in the 1950s during the Cold War.

Most of which make perfect sense given the heightened conflict of the period.

But sometimes I have to say they just feed the imagination like the myth that a passageway runs under the green from the old parish church to the Horse & Jockey.

It is one of those fanciful ideas born of half remembered school history involving religious persecution, priest holes and a walloping big dose of wishful thinking.

We certainly did have our own martyr to the old religion but I doubt that the Barlow family would have constructed a tunnel across the green.  And even had they done so I rather think it would have come to light during the last 400 years, either from one of the frequent burials that took place in the graveyard or the archaeological dig of the late 1970s and early 80s.

Camps Street, 1849 and the route of the canal in 1849

That said there is no doubt that many things lurk below our city streets which takes me back to Mr Warrender’s book and more particularly the Manchester and Salford Junction Canal Tunnel.

It was probably built as a cutting and then roofed over.  Just at the entrance to the tunnel hard by Charles Street was a gasometer which supplied “power of the lamps every thirty yards.”

Charles Street disappeared as the Liverpool Road warehouse complex expanded, along with Ashton Street, New Street and Dumbar Street and Garden Court.

But Camp Street is still there although the houses in this 1944 picture have long gone.

They were there during the construction of the canal which must have been irksome to the residents.

Not that I suspect either the owners of the land, or the houses or even the canal company were over bothered for the wishes of the occupants of the houses facing the work.

Camps Street, 1944

These were mostly families who earned a living from the work of skilled craftsmen, labourers and those engaged in work in the cotton mills.

Not I suspect that these people gave much thought to the men who were labouring in the tunnel just a few feet from their front doors which brings me back to that picture of the underground canal in 1938.

I have to say that there is something a little uncomfortable at about the picture which I suppose stems from my own dislike of enclosed places which are both dark and full of water.

But then by the time this picture was taken the canal had been closed to commercial traffic for two years and was on the way to becoming a forgotten place.  Already the section from Watson Street to the Rochdale Canal had been closed for sixty three years and been backfilled in preparation for the construction of Central Station.

Location; Manchester

Pictures; Camp Street canal, City Engineers, 1938, m77571, Camp Street, T. Braddeley, m00701, Camp Street, City Engineers, 1944, m78767, Camp Street, C.Holt, 1938, m00700, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass map of Camp Street showing underground route of the canal from the Manchester and Salford OS 1842-49, courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ and Camp Street, 2012 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Underground Manchester, Keith Warrender, Willow Press 2007, and also Below Manchester by the same author and publisher.

**ibid, Underground Manchester, page 23

The Welcome Inn ................... the early days

Now some stories just have a habit of not wanting to go away.

They stay hanging around challenging you to go off and discover something new to add to what has already been said.

And so it is with the Welcome Inn which every time I feature the pub strikes a chord with many people usually about my age.

In particular it is tales of Sunday nights which continue to bubble up enriched by the memories of meeting future husbands or lasting friends.

And I should know because while I was just that bit too young to drink I would listen to the happy crowds coming back down Well Hall Road past our house in the mid 60s a little after closing time.

More recently I began looking for the history of the place, and while a few people were able to offer up names of past landlords the very early history of the pub proved illusory.

And then my old friend, fellow researcher and local historian Tricia Leslie told me about The Woolwich Story by E.F. E. Jefferson.

It is as she promised me a wonderful account of the Borough from the earliest of times up to its merger with Greenwich.

I have already used the book and know I shall go on plundering it for some time to come.

So in the chapter on the 1920s I came across this “On the brow of the hill stood a large wooden building used as a workmen’s club but demolished about 1927 when the Welcome Inn was built.  

This modern hostelry set new standards in both furnishing and service.  Seated in comfort, one had to preserve patience until the waiter came to take the order, for customers were not permitted to get their own drinks at the bar. 

But this arrangement proved too leisurely, annoyed those who only had time for a quick one and tended generally toward the restraint of trade. A wise host discontinued the practice.”

Now I have no idea when that service was discontinued but I well remember the practice was still in use in some of the big Manchester pubs in the late 1960s, with the waiters in white jackets and in some rooms a bell push to summon assistance.

Sadly there are few photographs of the waiters or indeed the interiors and it would be nice if any could be shared of the Welcome in its heyday.

So that is it.  I now know when the pub was open which was clearly aimed at the Progress Estate and the new build going up behind the pub and the appeal is out for pictures.

We shall see what we get.

But in the meantime I shall go looking at the electoral registers which will give us the names of the landlords or landladies from when it opened through to the 1960s.

Location, Eltham

Picture; the site of the Welcome courtesy of Jean and the cover of The Woolwich Story

Uncertain times ……… when nasty bits of history don’t go away

I suppose every generation at some point comes to terms that with uncertain times, threats become real and the unthinkable becomes a prospect to be prepared for.

Poland, 2026

This is a Polish guide which today slipped through the letterbox of our kid who lives in Warsaw.

The title is "Poradnik bezpieczeństwa", subtitled "Przeczytal;przecwicz! zachowaj!" which translates as "Safety Guide Read it! Practice it! Keep it!"

And given that Poland neighbours Ukraine which continues to defend itself from Russian aggression the message is clear.

For my generation it was the Cold War and the very real threat that the superpowers would plunge the world into a nuclear war.

It was a very real threat that never really subsided from the 1950s onwards and had a second visitation in the 1980s.

I can remember the Civil Defence Drills, the short public information messages on the telly showing how RAF bombers could be in the air in under 4 minutes and the sheer horror of the Cuban Missile Crisis.  

All of which resurfaced in the 1980s when with growing tensions between the USA and the Soviet Union a new set of nuclear warheads were developed on a new set of delivery systems.

Britain, 1957

That second Cold War resulted in the little booklet "Protect and Survive" which was delivered to every household across the country and was accompanied by television adverts.

Britain, 1940

So grim were the outcomes of a nuclear exchange of weapons and so helpless it seemed were the prospects of survival when you lived in a city that most of didn’t even open the booklet.

That said the preparations made during the run up to the Second World War did save heaps of lives.

My parents and grandparents will have worked their way round those preperations and regulations, carrying gasmasks, observing the blackout and in the case of dad leaving his job as a coach driver and to take up eseential war work in the north east. 

As far as I know Dad never joined the Home Guard, but others in the family will have done.

In time I will get to know what is inside the Polish document.

But history suggests it will make grim reading.

Pictures; Poradnik bezpieczeństwa, Polish Ministry of Defence, a civil defence poster produced in 1957 by the Central Office of Information (INF 2/122)Civil Defence is Common Sense, National Archives, https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/fifties-britain/civil-defence-common-sense/ Rifle Training for War, a textbook for Local Defence Volunteers by Captain Ernest H. Robinson, 1940